Silenced Page #4

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it made me think

the mission wasn't all

it was cracked up to be.

and then, a colleague

came in and said,

"headquarters

is sending in a private jet

to pick him up and take him

to his next location."

at about 3:
00 in the morning,

we wheeled him out.

he was so upset,

he asked me to hold his hand.

he asked if we

were going to kill him,

and i said, "no.

no, we've been looking for you

for a long time.

in fact," i said, "you're

gonna get the best medical care

that the u.s. government

has to offer."

and so, the doctor gave him

a shot of demerol,

and it knocked him out.

and we loaded him

onto this private jet.

[ jet engines whirring ]

one of the guys

who had flown out

to escort him

to his onward location

got off the plane.

the guy was dressed

completely in black --

black mask, black hat,

black sweater.

and he said my name.

he said, "john?"

and i said, "who are you?"

and he lifted up his mask,

and he was a former supervisor

of mine at headquarters.

and he said,

"what are you doing here?"

and i said, "oh, i'm

chief of counterterrorism."

i said,

"what are you doing here?"

he said, "i'm gonna

take your prisoner onward."

he said, "who is he, anyway?"

and i said, "i'm sorry, man.

you don't have a need to know."

and i said,

"where are you taking him?"

and the guy said,

"i'm sorry, man.

you don't have a need to know."

and i said, "well, safe flight."

and the plane took off,

and i never saw him again.

[ jet engines roar ]

when i returned

to headquarters from pakistan,

i was told that the cia

had begun a program

that they were calling enhanced

interrogation techniques,

and did i want to be trained

in the use of these enhanced

interrogation techniques?

uh, i had

a visceral problem with it.

first of all,

let's call it what it is --

it's torture.

they can call it

whatever euphemism they want,

but it's torture.

so, i went back to

the counterterror center,

and i said,

"i have a problem with this,

and i don't want

to be involved."

and then i heard rumors

that we had created

this system of secret prisons

around the world,

that even the heads of state

in these countries

didn't know that we had

these secret prisons there,

that these were deals struck

between the head of the cia

and the head of whatever

that country's service was.

these weren't meant

to be permanent facilities.

they were just meant

to extract information...

[ muffled shouting,

water dripping ]

-...where we didn't have

to worry

about laws or human rights.

but, you know, those of us who

weren't read into these programs

only got this

in bits and pieces.

i had no idea how extensive

this secret prison system was

until a couple of years

after i left the agency

and i read about it

in the press.

because we're americans

and we're better than that.

-but at the time,

you didn't feel that way.

-at the time, i was so angry

and i wanted so much

to help disrupt future attacks

on the united states

that i felt it was

the only thing we could do.

-and with zubaydah,

you think that was successful.

-it was.

i had been misinformed

by the cia.

the cia told

those of us in headquarters

that they had waterboarded

abu zubaydah one time,

that he had cracked,

and that he had provided

actionable intelligence.

-he answered every question

just like i'm sitting here

speaking to you.

-so, in your view,

the waterboarding broke him.

-i think it did, yes.

-and did it make a difference

in terms of...?

-it did.

the threat information

that he provided

disrupted a number of attacks,

maybe dozens of attacks.

that turned out

to be untrue,

and we know it was untrue

because in 2009,

the cia inspector general's

report was released,

indicating that abu zubaydah

had been waterboarded 83 times

and still did not provide

actionable intelligence.

[ water pouring ]

believe me, for the life of me,

i wish i could take that back.

but i talked about the issue

with the information

that i had at the time,

and the information

was just simply incorrect.

abu zubaydah may never have been

an al qaeda member,

now, in retrospect,

we're finding out.

he may have been somebody

who supported al qaeda's goals,

he may have been someone who

was a professional logistician,

where he was helping them

procure medicine

or false documents.

we don't really know.

but he was not

the senior al qaeda official

that the cia and nsa

and the white house

wanted us to believe.

-so, i actually, like --

everything was vacuumed,

i laid down the stuff.

-my husband

was incredibly supportive.

and so, i think

that was a saving grace.

when all this horrible stuff

was going on,

i could go home and there was

sort of this safe haven.

[ laughs ]

give me a kiss.

bye.

-bye.

-you know, i promised myself

when i was going through this

that if i ever

got out of this mess,

i would dedicate my life

to representing whistle-blowers.

whistle-blowers come in here

and they all say to me,

"you will not believe

what i'm going through."

and i can actually look them

in the eye and say,

"yes, i will, and i do

because i know what the

government's capable of doing."

my becoming a whistle-blower...

began on december 7th of 2001.

[ telephone rings ]

and i got a call

from the criminal division

saying that the fbi

on the ground in afghanistan

had captured an american

fighting with the taliban.

and my counterpart

wanted to know,

could the fbi interrogate him

without a lawyer?

and i was told unambiguously

that this american,

a guy named john walker lindh,

was represented by counsel.

now, for my office,

this was a bread-and-butter

kind of question.

i said, "no.

it would be

a pre-indictment interview

of someone

who was in custody,

and it was not

an undercover operation."

i went home over the weekend,

not thinking about it.

and i came back on monday.

and the gentleman from

counterterrorism called back,

and he said,

"oops, we did it anyway.

"the fbi went ahead

and interrogated him.

what do we do now?"

you know, i was trying to work

with the criminal division

and saying, like,

"okay, look,

i understand you're on

the battlefield,

heat of war,

and they

interrogated him anyway.

so, let's figure out

how to do cleanup."

so, i advised

that they should seal off

the interview

of john walker lindh

and use the information

only for national security and

intelligence-gathering purposes,

but not for criminal

prosecution.

meanwhile,

pictures were circulating

worldwide by that time

of this guy, naked,

bound to a board with duct tape,

blindfolded, hands tied

in front of his genitals.

it was pretty clear this guy

was not being treated well.

in fact, this looked very much

like what we saw

years later at abu ghraib.

[ camera shutters clicking ]

-today i'm announcing

the filing of criminal charges

against john walker lindh.

-the attorney general,

ashcroft,

was into these

very flashy press conferences.

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